February 15, 2019

(In)Security – Weekend Open Thread

by wj

These musings about the American approach to security are not actually motivated by this week’s activities around Trump’s fantasy wall and its supporters. Although there are some obvious implications. Rather, they stem from the trip I took last week to Brussels. Specifically, about my observations concerning airport security in Europe, as opposed to at US airports.

One obvious difference is at security check points. At US airports, chances are you will get to empty everything out of your pockets, take off your shoes, and go thru the nudiescope. In Europe, nobody thinks you need to take off your shoes, and the metal detectors are set relaxed enough that you don’t even need to take off your watch.

But the other big difference, and one which particularly struck me, was that every airport that I went thru had pairs of soldiers, with semiautomatic weapons (and in jungle camo for some reason), patrolling. In US airports, I have seen lots of military personnel in uniform – but only because they were traveling. Not a weapon, let alone any serious weapons, among them.

The difference, I suspect, is that Europeans are serious about security. Whereas Americans seem mostly interested in the appearance of security – “security theater” if you will. So European governments mainly do things which will increase actual security. Whereas the American government does things that will serve as constant reminders to the traveling public that they have “done something” – whether it actually serves any useful security function or not. One has to wonder why that is. (And no, I don't have an answer on that.)

Of course, the same focus on symbolism over actual usefulness is reflected in the Trumpists’ obsession over Trump’s wall. Even if the problems that Trump (falsely) alleges were real, the wall would be of minimal use in addressing them. But as a symbol, it is apparently quite potent. At least for some.

Comments

The British government has been keen for the last decade or so on new nuclear power stations, and has offered very generous financial terms to any company willing to build one. But currently there's only one live project, Hinkley Point C. Despite the extraordinary subsidies, the EDF finance director resigned over the project.

As the world grows wealthier, the less impact weather and climate have on people's lives. In spite of the growth in world population, there has been about a 90% decline in the number of people dying due to weather and climate than did so a hundred years ago.

Well, yes. But I am totally unimpressed. Our current GNP is nearly $20Trillion/year. Just for a guess, if we threw $10Trillion a year at this effort we could maybe achieve such goals.

I'm trying (without, I confess, much success) to imagine the administrative infrastructure required to redirect 50% of the GDP. To anything.

Not to mention the need to redirect manpower, including relocating it. At least in WW II we had a basic military structure to build on. And could have guys living in tents. Well, at least the infrastructure for the draft is still in place. Although I'd expect it to need serious tweaks -- for example to include all adults under 70, not just young men. Still, it's more of a start than we've got for other stuff.

I'm not trying to minimize the problem here. And no question we should have started a couple of decades ago. But at this point, I suspect we need to put at least half our efforts into dealing with the consequences that it is no longer possible to avoid.

I'm trying (without, I confess, much success) to imagine the administrative infrastructure required to redirect 50% of the GDP

You are not trying very hard:

"Before joining World War II US government spending in 1941 represented 30% of GDP, or about $408 billion. In 1944 at the peak of World War II, government spending had risen to over $1.6 trillion about 79% of the GDP. During this three-year period the total GDP represented by government spending rose 394%.[30]"

Extreme weather events around the globe have tripled since the 1980s, but what's happening in the U.S.?

The US has its own private climate. The US is god's little green acre, so it's not affected by anything that happens in other places. As long as things are peachy for Americans, the rest of the world can go fuck itself.

The effect of climate change has not been a net positive. The forests are dying from bug infestations. Fires are devastating whole regions. The large hurricanes and associated flooding destroyed homes of people who cannot afford to rebuild and have lost the only asset they had either to fund their old age to leave to their children. The economic dislocations have begun--Nunes is an example since he no longer farms in CA but is now part owner of a farm in Iowa. Comparing weather deaths of back in the day to now is not the right measure to use.

Nigel, I may be misreading the article. But it appears to me that they are talking about having plenty of capacity based on the assumption that EVs are close to competing on price and have up-take accordingly...

Yes. It’s an interesting article produced by China’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer, and contains market and technology estimates which look quite conservative to me (for example, the 20% drop in cost of production the cite will be readily achievable by Tesla within about three years, simply by adopting a dry cathode design).
Their market forecast appears to be based on carrying on as we are - ie no dramatic government intervention - and has around 50% of the transport market being electric by 2030. Under that scenario, they see a production glut.

Again, using current technologies, and current market financing, a Tesla gigafactory can be built and fully productive (4-500,000 vehicle per annum) in four to five years. To get to 100% EV production will mean building a lot of them. that in of itself is not a massive problem - left to the market it would probably take until somewhere around 2040/2050.
Government intervention to shorten that timeframe to 2030 might be costly, but likely not all that costly, as its merely accelerating a process which is market driven (as an example, new lithium mines’ development by existing market producers would be accelerated dramatically if they had certainty the market for their product would be guaranteed by federal legislation).

Of course getting to 100% EV production and replacing all existing cars on the road are two different things - and bringing forward the latter by decades much more expensive than the former, as the total number of cars on the road is around 13 times current annual production.

If you ask too much of people, they won’t support your ideas no matter how great they are. And even if they do, they aren’t likely to respond appropriately to the scale of the problem on their own. I haven’t, after all. Neither have you. But that’s OK: climate change won’t be affected much by personal action anyway. It’s too big. Like a war, it requires action on a governmental scale. Unlike a war, however, it has no human enemy to spur citizens to accept the sacrifice it takes to win. It’s up to us to come up with an alternative.

The greatest impediment is the book value of all of the stuff we need to leave in the ground, if we're not going to continue to pump CO2 into the air.

It's possible to think long-term about this. It's not necessary to leave the stuff in the ground forever - the Rolling Stonearticle talks about how much we can afford to burn "by mid-century". And the energy value of fossil fuels is the same whenever you burn them, so their present book value should be much the same also.

What if global warming didn't exist? Most resources are renewable - ultimately whatever materials we use remain on earth and can eventually be recycled. The exceptions are fossil fuels and helium. A responsible, dare one say conservative, policy would be to use these resources as gradually as possible, so that future generations get a share also.

The argument for current (especially Republican) energy policy is that we deserve to be as rich as we possibly can, even if it makes future generations poorer. I profoundly disagree with that.

Pro Bono: The argument for current (especially Republican) energy policy is that we deserve to be as rich as we possibly can, even if it makes future generations poorer. I profoundly disagree with that.

I do too. But it doesn't cover the venal destructiveness of current/Republican energy/everything policy, which is that not just some nebulous "we" denoting "everyone alive now," but any given individual alive now "deserves" to be as rich as s/he possibly can, even if it makes everyone else currently alive poorer. Every time I think of Howard Schultz, with his $3.5 billion and change, saying "we can't afford it," I want...well, never mind what I want. I'm sure you can fill in the blank.

The greatest impediment is the book value of all of the stuff we need to leave in the ground, if we're not going to continue to pump CO2 into the air.

Note, however, that there are lots of valuable uses for hydrocarbons which don't involve generating CO2 by burning them. Just for one, as feedstock for creating various organic chemicals and plastics. (Yes, there are problems with plastics too. But they aren't global warming problems.) So not as much of a foregone value issue as you might think.

Someone mentioned persuasion. Here's the editor of a newspaper in Alabama -- a sample of someone who's not "persuadable" (among other things that he's not):

Time for the Ku Klux Klan to night ride again. Democrats in the Republican Party and Democrats are plotting to raise taxes in Alabama....This socialist-communist ideology sounds good to the ignorant, the uneducated, and the simple-minded people.

Perhaps more interesting than mandates... Last summer in Colorado, Xcel Energy -- the largest utility in the state -- asked the PUC for permission to shut two coal-burners down early and replace them with renewables plus storage because it's cheaper. Xcel says that 55% of the electricity they deliver to their customers in Colorado will be carbon-free by 2026, and 100% by 2050 (note their use of carbon-free rather than renewable).

They have a number of advantages in Colorado over many other parts of the country. They already have a 1.2 GWh pumped hydro storage facility in the mountains (300 MW max output for four hours if the upper reservoir is full). The wind downflow off the Rockies is more reliable than most locations in terms of how much of the time it's producing power. Colorado is isolated enough that they get to run their own dispatching rules -- renewables first even if it means backing off their own coal- and natural gas-fired generation.

Of course getting to 100% EV production and replacing all existing cars on the road are two different things

Here in Japan, there is a mandatory 'shaken', a combination of an inspection and required auto insurance, and with each iteration, the price becomes higher, which results in a much larger number of newer cars on the road.

FWIW and in the interests of accuracy, I just saw in hilzoy's feed that the NYT article I linked upthread about women in IT quoted a debunked study for one of their stats. Their factcheckers seem to be getting a bit sloppy....

CharlesWT: "California passed a law in 1970 that all internal combustion engines would be banned in five years. :)"

Please provide a citation to this law. All I could find in a quick search for it was that the (national) Clean Air Act of 1970 allowed California to set its own standards, which could be tougher than the national standards (and were). But no reference to actual banning cars then. What have I missed?

IMHO the questions we are dealing with here are tough enough without the problem of fake news.

"In 1969 California State Senator Nicholas Petris, a Democrat from Oakland, proposed a bill that would have banned the sale of any vehicle with a gasoline or diesel-powered internal combustion engine by 1975. Needless to say, that bill went nowhere quickly. But if such legislation had been taken seriously, what would have replaced the internal combustion engine? Well, in the 1970s California state legislators thought they had found the answer in cars that run on steam. Yes, steam."Steam-Powered Cars: California's 1970s Smog Solution: Steam-powered cars may sound like a shout-out to the early 1900s, but in 1970s California the idea was building up a real head of, umm, steam.

Yeah, there have been proposals to privatize all or part of the BPA since at least the Reagan administration. And Southern California already buys a bunch of the Columbia River electricity at certain times of the year (that's what Path 65 is for, after all). Lots of Oregon's surplus wind power, as well. Sometime in the next few years the TransWest Express HVDC line will be built and California will start buying large amounts of Wyoming wind power.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. Turning the Western Interconnect's geographically diverse intermittent renewable power sources into a reliable system requires the ability to shuffle large amounts of power around the region. One of the two viable region-wide HVDC layouts is a hub-and-spoke arrangement with the hub somewhere in Southern California or southern Nevada.

Over time, the gap between the noble intentions of the patriot Act and the dirty reality of the property market became too wide to ignore. In 2016, Barack Obama’s administration tested a program to bring the real-estate industry in line with the banks, compelling brokers to report foreign buyers, too. The ongoing program, piloted in Miami and Manhattan, could have become the scaffolding for a truly robust enforcement regime. But then the American presidency turned over, and a landlord came to power. Obama’s successor liked selling condos to anonymous foreign buyers—and may have grown dependent on their cash.

The "winning" candidate, Mark Harris, has been maintaining that, whatever dirty tricks and fraud happened, he had no knowledge of them at the time. But now, someone (his son in point of fact) has come forward to say that he was warned explicitly during the campaign. Of yes, and said son is, by day, an assistant U.S. Attorney. In other words, not just a random guy off the street. Awkward!

If liberals in the Democratic Party had the organizational moxie, discipline, and ruthlessness of the American subhuman pconservative movement, they would begin chanting in unison across the land for eternity the following:

This fascist white supremacist republican conservative terrorist murderer planned his violence with the full knowledge and support of the p White House and the Republican Congress, in fact, the plot was hatched in the new pizza parlor established in the basement of the White House in between bouts of republican conservative FOX News personalities, men and women, anally raping the thousands of Central American and Mexican children kidnapped from their families by the republican ICE perverts and whom the p Administration claims cannot be located and even if located, are being so carnally enjoyed by their so-called Christian foster families that we can't risk returning them to their rightful parents.

But we haven't the guts to lower ourselves to their level. I guess we were raised right, unlike the majority of the conservative political and media wurlitzer.

I'm getting my bile out now before this anti-American jackass filth get and his fascist wife take the rest of my First Amendment rights away:

We really need to strongly distinguish between real world policy recommendations versus economic theory. The real world is complicated. Economic models have abstracted away that complexity so that we can make definitive statements about their simplified world.

It strongly puts me in mind of fluid dynamics, back when I was in college. The Navier-Stokes equation, which describes fluid flows, is not mathematically solvable.** So Fluid Mechanics consisted of making various simplifying assumptions, to reduce it to something that could be solved. Ideal (frictionless) Fluid Flow. Boundary Layer Theory. Etc. Among other things, if you ever flew in a plane designed before to mid to late 70s (maybe later), it was designed using those simplified models. Yet, they flew.

As a result, I am underwhelmed by criticisms like this. Not to say that the simplifications might not be the wrong ones, or applied incorrectly or inappropriately. But the mere fact of being simplifications is not, to my mind, a valid criticism. The "simplified world" can actually tell us a great deal about the far more complex real world.

** Of course, computers can do close approximations. Once you have powerful enough computers. I actually wrote one of the very first computer programs to model fluid flows. Back in the late 60s. Very, very much an initial baby step. But it was a start.

Recent posts that have received widespread dissemination include racially inflammatory memes and messaging involving Harris, O’Rourke and Warren. In Warren’s case, a false narrative surfaced alleging that a blackface doll appeared on a kitchen cabinet in the background of the senator’s New Year’s Eve Instagram livestream.

Not all of the activity is organized. Much of it appears to be organic, a reflection of the politically polarizing nature of some of the candidates. But there are clear signs of a coordinated effort of undetermined size that shares similar characteristics with the computational propaganda attacks launched by online trolls at Russia’s Internet Research Agency in the 2016 presidential campaign, which special counsel Robert Mueller accused of aiming to undermine the political process and elevate Donald Trump....

For several years now MMT folks basic premise was there was no limit to the money that can be printed. Suddenly inflation is s limiting factor, so there is a limit. Making the rest of it an academic discussion of Fed policy versus fiscal policy, which is what we have now.

Guaranteed jobs is an interesting twist. We.should review places where that's been implemented across a diverse workforce of over 180m people.

Since the Mueller thing appears to be winding down, I'm curious to know folks' thoughts about whether:

* Congress will ever see the report, in whole or significant part
* The public will ever see the report, in whole or significant part
* Anything will come of it beyond the indictments already handed down

I'm calling it a worthwhile exercise no matter where it lands (it's even a profit center for the feds!) but I have to admit my personal answers to the above are:

THREAD ON WHETHER MUELLER REPORT WILL BE PUBLIC, AND @washingtonpost STORY ABOUT TRUMP HIRING MANY NEW LAWYERS TO ASSERT EXEC PRIVILEGE. Short Answer: It will be public.

-- From a guy named Neal Katyal, who says he drafted the special counsel statute at DOJ 20 years ago.

If he is who he says he is (and I trust Silverman on this), and if we come out with russell's "no" on russell's point two (about which I'm making no prediction, jaded or otherwise :-), then...

It's over. Putin and McConnell and the worldwide cabal of oligarch/fascists that put a vicious criminal buffoon in the White House will have overthrown the US as we once knew it (well, they've already done that), and all those D candidates might as well simply name themselves officers of the Resistance, because there won't be any presidential election in 2020.

The Washington Post (Jacqueline Alemany) has a good rundown, including a reminder that it isn't just Roger Stone, but:

"the investigation has so far led to criminal charges against 34 people (many of them Russians unlikely to be extradited) and six advisers and Trump associates have pleaded guilty. "

So that's a little bit comforting.

But I think that Mueller will end up being subpoenaed, because I don't trust Barr at all. His son-in-law just got a job as Trump's legal advisor. Working against him from within, or bought and sold? I think probably the latter.

I'm still hoping that Mueller has referred most things out, or has indicted people and the documents are still under seal, or took other steps to make sure any potential criminal cases go forward. I think it's been a worthwhile effort, but my optimism is muted.

* Congress will ever see the report, in whole or significant part
* The public will ever see the report, in whole or significant part
* Anything will come of it beyond the indictments already handed down

1) Yes. But to get the whole thing they will have to formally issue a subpoena. And probably have to get a Supreme Court ruling as well. (Although there's a chance Barr will notice the precedent of the Watergate tapes and just hand it over without going to court.)

2) In part, at least. Probably the whole thing. Leaking in Washington has reached the point that, once it leaves Mueller's hands, somebody will leak it. Even if Congress doesn't officially make it public.

3) Yes. First, I expect there will be more indictments. No way Mueller doesn't have enough to nail at least a couple of Trump's kids. Because of current Justice Dept. policy, I expect Trump himself to be merely an unindicted co-conspirator. But definitely named.
Second, I expect a political firestorm. Impeachment? Yes. Removal? Kind of depends on a) how Republicans in the Senate feel about the reaction to those voting to quash the declaration of national emergency over the wall, and b) just how bad the full report looks.

Removal or not, I expect several senators who thought they were in safe seats in dark red states to learn otherwise. See what's happened with the Kansas state government.

1. My sense of it is that I have no sense of what goes on in DC. First blush is that the pertinent committees will see it. I dunno if that will satisfy Congress at large or if there will be enough widespread clamoring that everyone gets to see it. I always thought that the powers that be got a lot of info through back-office scuttlebutt, but maybe they really are in the dark. Anything leaked will be swimming upstream against the currents of fake news and hidden agendas and deep-state whatevers.

My last hope is that Mueller has some kind of deadman's switch that will somehow outmaneuver any squelching attempt by Barr, et al, and that Pelosi would see to it that the Mueller team got its day in open testimony at the very least.

2. I think the public will get to see something. I doubt that it will contain anything earth-shattering as all of the salient (or salacious) bits will be redacted. It's for our own good, you know.

3. I don't know where the bar is set anymore. Trump and his circle infest the gutter between the illegal and the repugnant. Demonstrable financial crimes will result in indictments for those far enough down the food chain to be susceptible to such prosecutions. Censure and other official tsk-tsking may ensue and it will have exactly zero impact. The GOP is so all-in with Trump at this point, I don't know what it would take to move enough of them to act in any meaningful way.

For several years now MMT folks basic premise was there was no limit to the money that can be printed.

There isn't. The question is under what conditions it will lead to problematic levels of inflation. What real resources are becoming scarce enough that the government should stop trying to acquire them? It's not so much about money as human effort and stuff.

That's the real point, rather than simply how big the deficit is without respect to the relevant context.

With all of the exciting news about Republicans' latest crimes, some things are falling under the radar. Via Now This: "The EPA has approved dumping bee-killing pesticides across 16 million acres of land."

Global warming is a huge monster facing us, but Trump's people are trashing the earth in so many other ways. We need to get rid of these people, and never again fall for their lies.

I'm sticking with my prediction that our political situation vis a vis the Mueller investigation and whatever ensues will end with armed confrontation in the hallways and elevator shafts of Mar-a-Lago and in the surrounding streets.

This is NOT Watergate. There will be no Presidential crying, only corrupt ruthlessness, applied with force.

"While the cited information was accurate, the suggestion that such an exemption was a new maneuver employed only by the Trump administration was misleading. In 2012, for example, President Barack Obama’s EPA issued specific exemptions for sulfoxaflor on cotton crops in four states. And in 2014, Obama’s EPA authorized the use of sulfoxaflor on sorghum crops in eight states. Again in 2015, Obama’s EPA authorized the use of sulfoxaflor on sorghum in 13 states. And during a period between 2016 and 2017 that saw the transition between the Obama and the Trump administrations, the EPA authorized the use of sulfoxaflor for both cotton and sorghum crops in 19 states."

The EPA originally registered sulfoxaflor in May 2013, but this action was vacated by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals after pollinator advocates petitioned for a new review of the registration. “In September 2015, the court found that the registration was not supported by evidence to demonstrate that it would not harm bees and vacated the registration,”

The "Obama did it too" incidents in 2012 and 2014 occurred before sulfoxaflor was de-registered. Quite possibly the 2015 incident as well.

I am not in the camp that says everything Obama did was virtuous. But this doesn't appear to be a particularly good example of "both sides dude!".

Nice try, though.

Long story short, Trump sucks on anything to do with the environment. Among other things, but definitely including that one.

That's a ridiculously bad rebuttal. Every instance was an emergency usage, the Obams EPA clearly knew there was a problem, they were defending a court case. It isnt both sides are bad, it's that there isnt an alternative, then or now.

I read tons of things here, russell, that warrant no defense. This struck me because it was clearly one if those things meant to go viral, crappy video, background music, etc. that I assume are probably not true. And it was bs.

It was the left equivalent of all the right wing bs websites. If we want to call it one we need to not then defend the other.

Regarding the initial registration of sulfoxaflor, there was some hope that it would be a less toxic substitute for neonicotinoids. It's my understanding that the toxicity to bees of both of these pesticides wasn't fully understood when they first came out because their toxicity is cumulative, and the testing didn't account for that.

I'm concerned that I haven't received my official National Emergency announcement text from the President of the United States on my cellphone, as promised months ago.

Maybe the White House, ICE, and Homeland Security are waiting for all of the little kids they have kidnapped at the border to be successfully sex- trafficked to sketchy families throughout the land before setting us on edge.

Maybe the White House, ICE, and Homeland Security are waiting for all of the little kids they have kidnapped at the border to be successfully sex- trafficked to sketchy families throughout the land before setting us on edge.

Let's think about this. Putting out the kind of universal notification you envision is going to require a bit of software. At least, if it's really going to be universal.

And the gang of clowns in charge hasn't the competence to create something like that. So (unless they outsource it to the Russians) their best bet is probably to wait until those kids are old enough to do the coding for them.

If bees, each of them, were owned as private property, preferably by corporate entities who could fully monetize them instead of consigning them to the tragedy of the commons, you can bet we wouldn't be treating them so.

Until bees send out a dividend check to each and every one of their shareholders, of what practical use are they, I ask you.

One of my brothers, for example, is one bee sting away from breathing failure at any time.

It's like them elephants. Unless I can use some them for my own porpoises, shooting them, skinning them, sawing off their tusks, requisitioning their glands for various sexual concoctions, and rendering the rest down to essential oils and lubricants, why should I give a shit about having ANY of them around.

Here's what we do: you, you, and youse are now pets to be admired and left alone by poaching humans. In exchange, the rest of yas are slaughtered byproduct for my needs. Otherwise, no more of yous at all. Capiche?

Just so with bee species. When they start obeying me, and not their queen, and delivering honey directly to me, then maybe, I'm not guaranteeing anything, but maybe, I'll be incented to give a little.

I'm concerned that I haven't received my official National Emergency announcement text from the President of the United States on my cellphone, as promised months ago.

Where the hell you been, bro? The alert came through loud and clear on October 3. I happened to be on a day trip to the western mountains of Maine, on what turned out to be the most beautiful peak season day of this past autumn. By coincidence, I had stopped in a Dunkin' Donuts in Norridgewock to get some coffee when the alert came through. The whole store came to a halt when everyone's phones screeched at once. Most of the people in the place didn't have a clue what it was all about, so the ones who did explained it to the others. Lots of head-shaking, then back to the coffee and donuts.

Oh, I received the initial blast on my cellphone announcing that I would be kept up-to-date on p's emergencies.

But I haven't received one specific to the Border Crisis National Crisis declared days ago.

I hold out slim hope too that he will alert me via cellphone minutes before I'm arrested by his capos.

In Denver, I spot Hispanic mothers pushing baby carriages full of ostensible infant terrorists daily, but I need a declaration from Mein Fuhrer to really panic.

Meanwhile FOX News, see the embedded video below of Joe Digenova threatening violence against liberals, issues national emergency alerts daily for martial law to be imposed. Apparently, Coast Guard members muster to the call:

My wife needed the house for a meeting tonught, so I met a couple of friends for dinner and a couple of beers.

One of the topics: is the POTUS mobbed up?

The circumstantial evidence was worth discussing.

What a fncked up national moment we are living through. I don't hold any particularly great personal animus toward folks who voted for Trump, but I do hold them responsible for subjecting us all to this bullshit.

People like Gorka should really stop talking about all the liberals they're gonna kill. He's a pissant, but at some point we're likely to take him seriously.

Well of course Gorka's not worried about who would win. The odds are substantial, perhaps even enormous, that he would be among those not around to see it. So he's free to fantasize about the outcome any way he likes.

I know I'm just shooting fish in a barrel here, and I'm sure it seems like maybe I'm trolling Marty with this stuff.

But seriously, what the hell? Trump is like some kind of cleek's law golem. Who poops in a gold toilet.

To follow up on the Gorkas of the world, it took, conservatively, 1,000 years of people - not strangers, neighbors, fellow-countrymen and women - hacking each other to bits to settle political differences before we slowly and painfully developed the annoying, cumbersome, bureaucratic, nanny-state institutions that provide a practical alternative to violence.

I've spent the last almost-20 years now listening to punks like Gorka fantasize about killing people they disagree with. It's time for creeps like that to crawl back under whatever rock they were hiding under before the advent of W's excellent adventures and MAGA gave them a place in the public discourse.

If they really, really, really want a war, I'm sure one can be provided. I don't want one. They probably don't either, they just like to engage in mental masturbation about it. It's childish and stupid and harmful.

Gorka, specifically, is welcome to go back to Hungary any time he likes. His point of view is quite popular there these days, maybe that creep Orban will give him a job.

Carbon Dioxide is being demonized just like the poor Jews during the Holocaust, says the guy, an Emeritus Professor of Physics at Princeton (finally, tenure benefits the shithead conservative coalition; OK then, get rid of tenure) permitted access to the Oval Office in America's White House and promoted to head up a fake news committee.

I wonder how he feels about carbon monoxide, especially in its concentrated form enclosed in mobile vans full of unsuspecting Jews?

"...The press is all Democrat, all liberal, all progressive, all left - they hate Republicans, they hate Trump. So the suggestion that there's ever going to be civil discourse in this country for the foreseeable future in this country is over. It's not going to be. It's going to be total war...."

I'm taking "the press" to be the equivalent of "the media" here. I wonder how people make these statements through outlets accessible to the public at large without realizing (or caring?) there's an inherent contradiction. Or maybe what's inherent is the implication that they're only referring to that part of mass media that they consider to be liberal and with which they naturally disagree, making the statement tautological. Either way, it's just stupid.

What also strikes me is that "civil discourse" must mean something along the lines of not being critical of Republicans and Rump. (How uncivil of me to leave out the "T"!) Forget that calls for violence from the so-called liberal media are few and far between enough that they fall well short of anything that could be considered the norm.

It's as though calling for, say, an investigation by law enforcement into something suspicious is the equivalent of calling for assassination. Even unfair characterizations of Rump's mental state are very different from suggestions that people should go out and shoot each other.

I guess it's uncivil of me to say DiGenova is a f**king poisonous douche bag (you know, hypothetically), but it's not nearly as uncivil as saying he should be shot.

What's that quote about accusing the opposition of doing the very things you're doing?

An EPA study of the comparative downwind effects of the "fizz, the fuzz, the fizzyfuzz, the ripshitz, and the deadly silent martin at dinner parties was quietly defunded by the White House Budget Office today.

Mick Mulvaney offered no verbal response to media questions about his reasoning, but his spokesman .. his ass ... lifted one cheek in the direction of the White House Press Corps.

I expect to soon see advertisements sporting claims like "My farts cure cancer" on right wing radio, or perhaps "Man passes gas in local hospital; all patients, even the legless and comatose ones, check themselves out in a stampede."